JACOB JR, MY JEWISH WORLD. SARAH SCHENIRER - BAIS YAAKOV - KRAKOW/POLAND

Sarah Schenirer tomb - Memorial. Konzentrationslager Plaszow. Krakow/Poland

Thursday, Iyar 22, 5777. May 18, 2017

Shalom! World. 

Sarah Schenirer

Sarah Schenirer was born in Krakow, Poland on July 15, 1883 to Bezalel Schenirer (born in Tarnow) and Reizel. In her memoirs, she describes herself as the unassuming and withdrawn daughter of Belzer Hasidic parents. She was intelligent and had a strong desire to learn. She attended school until the age of thirteen, but could not continue because her familly was poor. She became a seamstress. When one client was unusually particular about the measurements of her dress, Schenirer wrote in her diary: "People are such perfectionists when it comes to clothing their bodies. Are they so particular when they address themselves to the need of their soul?"

Founded by Sarah Schenirer as a way of combating assimilation among her contemporaries. Bais Yaakov is an Orthodox Jewish educational movement for girls and young women that began in Krakow, Poland in 1917 and spread rapidly throughout much of the Askhenazic Jewish world. 

Since the commandment of Torah stydy is not incumbent on women, there had not been a tradition of formal schooling for girls within the Jewish community. Instead, they were trained at home, usually by their mothers and other female relatives, for the largely domestic roles they would be fulfilling as adult Jewish women. By the second half of the nineteenth century, as economic conditions in Eastern Europe deteriorated, partly due to the rise of yeshivot for men, there arose an economic need to send girls to school to acquired the linguistic and vocational skills necessary to support a family. There was also pressure by governmental forces to educate Jewish children in non-religious venues. As a result, many obervant Jewish parents began to send their daughters to non-Jewish and sometimes even Cathoclic schools, where they were often influenced by anti-traditional cultural and social trends, including a nascent form of feminism. This exposure caused many of them to question and even abandon the traditional structures of family and community within they lived. In 1903, at a rabbinical conference in Krakow, a suggestion was made to establish Orthodox schools for girls, in order to keep them "within the fold," but this suggestion was rejected as being too radical an innovation. 

After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Sarah moved to Vienna. There she learned from the weekly teaching of Rabbi Moshe Flesh in shul, he recommended Sarah to learn also from the teaching of Rabbi Shamshon Raphael Hirsch, which she did. She returned to Krakow early the next year, where the inspiration she received in Vienna led her to organize a gorup of girls and teach them Jewish studies. Furthermore, she instilled in her students a love for the Torah and excitement to do mitzvos. Her sensitivity and care for others were something her students strove to emulate. She succeeded in overcoming initial resistance against this new type of school and saw rapid development of about 300 schools in pre Holocaust Europe. Her initiative was approved by the leading rabbis of the times, such as the Gerrer Rebbe, Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter and Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan (known as "the Chofetz Chaim"). 

In 1923 Schenirer set up a teachers' seminary to train staff for her rapidly expanding network of schools. The main goal of the schools was "to train Jewish daughters so that they will serve the Lord wit all their might and with all their hearts; so that they will fulfill the commandments of the Torah with sincere enthusiasm and will know that they are the children of a people whose existence doen not depend upon a territory of its own, as do other nations of the world whose existence is predicated upon a territory and similar racial background."

When Sarah Schenirer died in 1935, more than 200 Bais Yaakov schools were teaching approximately 35,000 girls. One of her students was Rebbetzin Vichna Kaplan, founder of the first Bais  Yaaakov high school and teachers' seminary in USA. In her will, she wrote: "My dear girls, you are going out into the great world. Your task is to plant the holy seed in the souls of pure children. In a sense, the destiny of Israel of old is in your hands."

Shalom! Aleichem.

Suporte cultural:  Jacob Jr. B.A.C.E., avec L'Integration d'Association avec Israel et dans le Monde/Cz.